


Sky on the Mountain

by peregrineroad



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: Fix-It, Gen, Past Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-05
Updated: 2018-02-16
Packaged: 2019-01-09 10:31:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12274581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peregrineroad/pseuds/peregrineroad
Summary: The family attempt to figure themselves out. Yondu attempts to defrost.





	1. Chapter 1

Yondu dreams of snow.

He’s going somewhere – somewhere – but even if he could remember the specifics of where that somewhere is, it’s impossible to navigate in all this fucking snow. He can’t see a damn thing, not one inch in front of his face; can’t even really feel his body anymore except as an indivisible haze of pain. He just has to keep moving. All his bits may have dropped off already, no way to know; he don’t remember what exactly he came out here to do, but he’s gotta move….Seems that staying alive is the thing, and he’s always been good at that.

It’s so damn cold. He can feel it inside him. Feels like there’s too much in there for the dimensions of one old Centaurian, even a Captain. Enough cold to fill a planet, or a galaxy, or a life from one end to the other. Maybe he’s always been cold.

How long’s he been here? He thinks he can hear Peter’s voice sometimes, a little way away, and he turns and tries to follow it. It is Peter’s voice. He couldn’t ever mistake it. But it’s wrong - not cocky and obstreperous and light same as the rest of him tries to be, but heartbroken; pleading. Yondu wants to know who did that. Boy might not be his to care for anymore, now he’s flown the mothership and acquired himself a nice little band of misfits to run with, but his wrongs are still Yondu’s to avenge. He can do that much still.

“ _Wake up, you old bastard, so I can yell at you properly.”_

He keeps moving.

* * *

Peter pleated the edge of the blanket between his fingers, staring at Yondu’s grey face. Watching for the faint fluttering under the eyelids which Rocket said he’d imagined. When he touched the fingers of his father’s hand, delicately, like he could do damage, they were still terribly, fatally cold.

“If you die, I’ll never forgive you,” he said. That wasn’t right either. Maybe if he kept throwing the wrong words towards Yondu’s frozen distance, he’d only have the right ones left when the old man finally came to.

“Wake up, you asshole, you bastard, you crusty old smurf…you think you can keep me waiting my whole damn life and then go out on a scene like  _that_? Without even sticking it out for five minutes, you big chicken? That you can dad and dash on me? That’s really…that’s bullshit and you know it. I’m gonna sit here and wait, and you’re gonna have to wake up eventually, and then….”

He folded his arms over his stomach as it lurched, huddling down.

“Then I’ll tell you…emotions, and stuff. All that sentiment you don’t want. You’re gonna hate it, I promise. And…why couldn’t you have told me any of this before, you complete dick? Yeah, I said it. One hundred percent a dick. You heard me. Why’d you let me go on thinkin’ I didn’t really have you, when you were there the whole time? Listen, old man.”

He poked Yondu in the chest. “You owe me and you know it. So wake up.”

* * *

 He’s hellish tired. It still smells of snow, but the white-out has darkened at the edges, and the cold is sharing shifts with a feverish heat, and he can’t hear Peter no more. He thinks he might be really lost. Feels like he’s rolling his weight up a slope. He wants is to be done. Go back down into the darkness. Except that Peter for sure isn’t down there, nor Kraglin neither, or the newest, fuzziest boy, or the Twig. Them ones he thinks he might be expected to live for, though he can’t recall how he got to thinking it.

Tullk and Oblo and those others, now, they might be there. Never got the rites. Why didn’t he see that they got the rites? He can’t fuckin’ remember, but he’s sure there’s no good excuse for it. He was their Captain; he was s’posed to take care of them. The only one, now, who would.

The heat’s coming on. He can feel the dry shaking of it, though it hasn’t helped him compartmentalise out his body from the pain any more than the cold had.

…Stakar won’t be down there. He feels it in his gut, a strobe of hotcold terror, almost familiar, never softened. He has known for over twenty years that he and Stakar won’t meet among the stars after he’s done, and it awakes a young man’s horror in him still. None of them…none of them will be there. He doesn’t want the death he has coming.

Smells of snow and blood.

“ _I’m real sorry, Captain. Ain’t got no excuse, I just…I’m sorry.”_

But he’s hellish tired.

* * *

Peter rubbed sleep out of his eyes, and caught the despondent look on Kraglin’s face before the lanky a-hole turned to go.

He yawned as loudly and obnoxiously as possible, then said, “Hey, Kraglin,” in a cheerful voice, as though he didn’t recognise a retreat when he saw it.

“Pete,” Kraglin said, guarded, not turning around.

“Was wondering when you were gonna show up and do your share of sleep-spectating,” Peter said. “It’s exciting. I think his finger twitched two hours ago.”

He swallowed the sourness of that and resumed the attack. “It’s freaking me out how he’s not snoring. It’s not me, right, he used to do that?”

“I guess, sure,” Kraglin mumbled.

“Come on, Kraglin, you don’t have to be loyal about every damn thing, he used to sound like a Yaxia chainsaw duel, there’s no way that changed after I left-”

“Shut up, Peter.” Kraglin was directing a glare over his shoulder with the kind of venom only Peter ever seemed to get out of him, but he was still aiming it at the floor, not Peter’s eyes.

Peter huffed. “Sorry, am I keeping you from something important? Like skulking?”

“I ain’t been skulking. And I ain’t.”

“What’s the second one for?”

The glare twitched upwards for just a moment. “Loyal about every little thing. Yeah, Captain snored somewhat. Y’ happy now?”

“…Not until he wakes up and calls you a liar,” Peter said, looking back at the still figure on the medical cot. Kraglin’s hands clenched.

“Yeah,” he said, and started to walk off again.

“Kraglin.”

“What.”

“I was the one who dyed your hair green before the Luxarian Princess job. Oh yeah, and I told all the recruits that you got that scar on your leg from tripping over Mesmaduke Front rather than saving my life from bandits. One time I snuck Spukeino Spiders into your booze, and you threw up for two days straight. Remember that?”

Kraglin finally turned around and looked at him, somewhere between angry and bewildered. “What?”

“I really envied you when we were kids, you know that?” Peter looked down at his knees. “He gave you respect, let you be responsible for stuff, called you ‘Kraglin’ rather than ‘boy’ all the time…. Never said sorry, but…I’m sorry.”

After a long moment, Kraglin came back to the bed. After an even longer moment, he sat down.

“We gave each other a whole lot of shit, huh?” he said.

“Yeah, I guess we did.”

“…I guess I’m sorry too.”

“He’s gonna wake up, Kraglin.”

“Maybe. Lot of others won’t, though. ‘Coz of me and my mouth.”

“Not just you. Other mouths are implicated, all right?” Peter threw his arm over his brother’s shoulder. “He’s gonna want you here when he comes around. I know that even if you don’t.”

* * *

Too hot. He struggles to breathe. Feels like someone parked a merchant ship on his chest. But the voices are back, and he can push towards them rather than slide back into the nightmares which always prey on him when he sleeps too long.

_“Anyway, Blue, how long you gonna laze about up here when there’s work to do? Quill’s even more useless than usual right now, and it’s spreading to the others. You do know he’s drooling on you, right? I know how you’re big on sentiment and not much for hygiene, but I’m telling you, it’s disgusting both ways.”_

Yondu’s lip twitches.  _Very convincing, Rat_ , he wants to say, but he can’t get the air.

“ _Not that I want you breathing down my neck about how to be a person or anything, but there’s still some shit we could talk about. Like the cleaning rota, and how much worse it is on your mouldering rust heap here. Seriously, Blue, this whole set-up is gross. Oh, Groot says hi.”_

 _Hi,Twig,_  he whispers.

In the slave pens, he used to have regular dreams of his parents. Still gets them sometimes. The dreams are the only memories he has of them; fleeting, ephemeral, probably pure horseshit. They are always full of shouting, and hands the same colour as his yanking on him, twisting at his arms or slapping at his face. Objectively, nothing near as bad as the normal day-to-day activity of a slave battalion, or even Ravager business. He always wakes up from them shaking, and he doesn’t understand why.

He feels raw and shaky in the same way now, but he can’t wake up. He tries, and all that happens is he runs out of breath, and the dark fills with red flashes and the ghosts of punishing hands.

* * *

Groot crawled up Peter’s slumped body onto the bed, and from there sat himself down on Yondu’s pillow. Firmly, he grasped the unconscious Ravager’s ear and tugged. Rocket suppressed a snort.

“Sorry, Groot,” he said. “That ain’t gonna work. Quill and the string-bean here already talked at least one ear off, so…”

“I am Groot.”

“No, I didn’t.” Rocket did snort then. “And I’m not spilling my guts in front of all this audience, either. I just came up here to tell him about Stakar and his other buddies stopping by.”

“I am Groot?”

“I don’t know, Groot. Maybe. I ain’t letting them up here on their own, though, old friends or not. You hear that, old guy?” Rocket kicked at his shoulder. “Your gang’s up here, hanging around. Clogging up the spaceways. Wanna see ‘em?”

Yondu shifted on the bed, eyelids twitching.

“I am Groot!!”

There was sweat on the old man’s face, and the shadows under his eyes were deep and purple even though he’d done nothing but sleep for over a week. Rocket dropped his feet to the floor and leaned forward, alarmed. Yondu’s arms were jerking abortively, struggling with something. His jaw was working.

“Hey, easy,” Rocket said, patting at Yondu’s arm. “Hey. It’s a dream, you probably have them all the time. No need to freak out. Yondu. Yondu!”

Peter stirred from the side of the bed quickly and then shot upright, looking about two foot taller and ungainly with his panic. Kraglin was a little slower to rise, his eyes going from his Captain’s face to the machines monitoring him.

“I am Groot,” declared Groot, standing on Yondu’s heaving chest and waving his vines in the air.

“Quit looking like that, Quill,” Rocket snapped. “He’s fine. He’s just having some kind of shitty nightmare. Yondu!”

The man gave one last jerk and went limp again. Peter bent over him, swearing softly under his breath.

“He’s still asleep,” he said at last.

“Typical,” said Rocket, and hid his shaking hands behind his back. 

* * *

Here’s the other reoccurring bad dream. He has many nightmares which shift and change like sand in a riverbed, but this one is always the same. He’s got Peter’s wrist clenched in one hand, drawing the boy along towards Ego. He can feel the boy’s tension pulling against him, and it makes something pull roughly inside his chest too, but he is, against his own will, inexorable.

“That’s your daddy, boy,” he says, and pushes Peter forward. Ego’s face creases into a welcoming smile. Peter goes, hesitant and then eager and then hurried, and crashes into Ego’s open arms. The Celestial looks at Yondu, still smiling, holding his son tightly. The golden light of his paradise glints off his teeth and transmutes his eyes to flat planes, blankly warm.

It’s snowing despite the heat. That’s the first change to this dream in decades. The snowflakes sparkle meltingly in the light.

“Thank you, Captain,” Ego says. “I’ve transferred your payment already.”

Peter looks back at Yondu, smiling, as though all is forgiven. Ice is collecting in his hair. Ego starts to carry him off, and as he goes Yondu feels his breath catch, feels his stomach drop as he suddenly  _knows_  that this will end badly; knows it’s more blood on his hands than he can endure; knows if he lets this happen then Peter will be simply gone and he won’t be able to get him back. He tries to follow after all, but the ground rises sharply under his feet. It’s wet and slick and icy. When he breaks into a run it splits open, exposing molten red and gold and the eerie blue of Ego’s power, and he can’t get through. They’re long out of sight by the time he hears Peter start screaming.

 _Fuck_.

Not again.

He remembers dying. The tunnelling sight of Peter’s face. The aching in his lungs as they hung empty. The feeling of frost crawling over his skin, his tongue, his eyes…

He’d sure been  _supposed_  to die. Hadn’t expected anything else. There’d been a moment, when they’d all been fighting together, when some kind of future had opened up at the back of his head, but it hadn’t mattered in the end. Hadn’t been supposed to.

He’d gone to die for Peter. It was owed. But he is still here. And here isn’t any kind of definitive underworld, just dark and heat and snow. He knows he’s dreaming.

Maybe Peter is gone instead. Maybe they all are. Maybe he’s fucked it all up anyway, despite trying; despite giving the last he has. Maybe Stakar had been right and there really is nothing left.

_“Come back, son.”_

He turns towards that voice, as he always has, easy as following gravity.

* * *

 Stakar looked at the four sleeping attendants around the bed, then glanced back at the polite green woman who had let him in. She smiled at his incredulous look, and nodded.

“He has been recovering well,” she said. “He just hasn’t woken up.”

“I see,” said Stakar, and approached the bed. Yondu’s face was slack and discoloured with frostbite, and he looked too thin. Looked  _old_. Wasn’t that a trip?

“Hey, kid,” he said anyway, because you’ve dragged a boy out of the howling darkness and felt him cling to you like you’re the first bright thing he’s ever seen, you remember him that way, time be damned. He leaned over and brushed his fingers against Yondu’s cheek. Too warm, and damp with sweat. He switched to rubbing gently at his shoulder. “Hey. Looks like you’ve got a crowd here waiting on you. Not a lively bunch, but a good one.”

He looked around again and smiled. The little cyborg boy who’d called him was only pretending to be asleep still, watching him carefully through slitted eyes.

“Maybe you should come back to ‘em, now, huh? You all probably have a lot to talk about.  I know we do. C’mon now. Come back, son.”

Of course it didn’t work like that. Yondu remained resolutely unconscious.

“Stubborn brat,” said Stakar, and sat cross legged on the floor to wait.

* * *

“All of you need to shower,” said Gamora firmly. “And sleep in your own beds. Especially you, Groot. Captain Ogord…the other Captain Ogord has been attempting to com you for six hours, and seems to be ready to board our ship to toss you out of it, so if you could please return her call we’d appreciate it.”

Stakar looked rueful. “I was supposed to talk to him first. Clear up the exile, and related matters…they all want to see him, but we thought everyone would be too much. Any room with Charlie in it feels full, see, and that goes double for Aleta.”

“I’m sure,” said Gamora, smiling slightly. “When Yondu awakens, we will let you know right away.”

“I smell fine,” said Peter, fresh from a round of exploratory sniffing. “I showered yesterday.”

“It was four days ago,” said Gamora. “You’re setting a bad example for Groot.”

“He doesn’t even sweat!”

“He does get dirty a lot,” Rocket said reasonably. “Look, he’s been spending all his time in here and he’s still got stuff on him. How’d you do it? Get over here, come on.” He licked a paw. Groot attempted to hide under Yondu’s pillow. “You ain’t fooling anyone.”

“I am Groot!”

“I _can_  see you.”

“I am Groot!”

“Four days, really?” Peter said. “I did yesterday’s cooking shift…”

“Two days ago.”

“This morning there was maintenance…”

“Yesterday. You smell, Peter.”

“Like, a manly musk? I’m just saying, I think I -”

“Like a Yaxia dungheap.”

“I am Groot! I am Groot, I  _am_  Groot.”

“Who’s been teaching you these words?”

“That’s really hurtful, Gamora.”

“Green girl’s right,” Yondu rasped. “’Cept I’d say a Utani Dungheap tha's next to a Yaxia food joint.”

After a startled moment, Gamora snapped her fingers. “That’s it exactly.”

“Hey,” Peter said feebly, staring at his father’s face. “You…wait, that’s the first thing you’ve got to say to me??”

“’s right,” Yondu said.

Peter groaned. “I like you so much better unconscious.”

“That why you all been hangin’ around?” His eyes moved from Peter to Kraglin to Rocket, who was absently polishing Groot still, and pretending not to be smiling. They stopped on Stakar, then dropped again.

“Welcome back, Yondu,” said Stakar.

“We were waiting for you to finally wake up so I can tell you you’re an  _idiot_ ,” said Peter. “What kind of jackass goes into space with no suit, huh? What kind of jackass tries to die for someone rather than just say, ‘hey, son, your dad’s a maniac,’ as a heads up sometime in the  _twenty six years_ we’ve known each other?” His fist closed on Yondu’s shirt. “What kind of jackass, actually, does any of the shit you’ve done? And now we had to sit around an’ listen to you snore for weeks because of it.”

“Pete,” said Kraglin, taking hold of his arm.

Yondu stared up at them, perhaps noticing Kraglin’s full-body trembling and the dampness in Peter’s eyes, Stakar’s intent look, Rocket’s relaxing shoulders.

“Damn it, boy,” he said at last. “I don’t snore.”


	2. Chapter 2

It is easier to remain still in the dark. Some organic coil of her brain thinks she is less likely to be seen like this, even though her own eyes burn easily through every shadow, and she knows Gamora, at least, can walk the unlit halls of the ship’s nightcycle with just as much clarity. Perhaps every one of them can, besides the uselessly Terran, de-deified Quill.

But Nebula is alone for now, except for the man on the bed, whose eyes are likely to remain closed.

She has never seen someone linger so long in the balance between life and death. Her own kills are usually quick. Thanos tortures many of his victims, but he is precise in the application of pain; their fates are always assured one way or another. Udonta looks already dead. Frostbite has eaten away much of his skin, and the rest lies slack and grey atop wasting flesh - but his chest continues to rise and fall, and there is some chance for him yet. The whole ship is waiting to know. Hope hangs sickly in the air, locking every member of the so called ‘Guardians’ into the same pattern of waiting.

Everyone except Nebula. She feels more like Udonta in this: the subject of a determination yet to be made, not the deciding agent. It is bitter, and yet.

Hope.

Gamora is preoccupied with Quill, who broadcasts restless energy as he strobes between angry and anguished, desperate and wistful. His mood is the literal soundtrack of their days: he cycles through songs on the primitive Terran device Udonta procured for him, looking to match each one of his rampant emotions. Nebula has never heard so much music, or listened to so many loud confessionals. The singers, like Quill, seem to have nothing but feelings and dancing to discuss.

Quill is one thing. Watching him emote makes her teeth ache, but watching as  _Gamora_ watches him births a fledgling tenderness in her chest, like the pain which twists her joints whenever the atmospheric pressure changes. Worse, Gamora looks at Nebula, too. Looks around each room she enters until she sees if Nebula is present. There is, each time, a questing uncertainty in her face. Whenever Nebula sees that, she retreats into the parts of the ship the Guardians have not yet colonised, but she hasn’t  _left_  yet, and she doesn’t know why. The music chases after her wherever she goes. Is it supposed to neutralise the feelings or make them worse? Futile. Foolish.

In the night, sometimes, she comes here. Quill has made it his base of operations, and the scraggly, strange Ravager Kraglin is often here too, and the fox. The fox is almost as bad as Quill; although he hides his need a little better, Nebula has seen his eyes. She recognises them in a way she doesn’t recognise any of the other intimations travelling amongst these people, though she’s no more willing to approach the fox than the others. Very occasionally, when all Udonta’s attendants have been corralled off elsewhere to perform the duties of a crew, she approaches the bed and stares at his still body.

Perhaps he will die.

Perhaps that will break the spell, and Gamora will look at her with the same old certainty, and Nebula will leave and kill Thanos and never turn back again.

She liked him well enough. She does not think she wishes him dead.

“There’s something seriously wrong with Quill,” she tells Udonta’s absent presence. Her voice sounds petulant to her own ears. “I suppose you know that. How can he stand to be….”

She folds her arms and scowls at herself.

“How can  _Gamora_ stand  _any_  of these people? None of them would last for one moment of Thanos’s attention; she is only setting herself up to…to lose everything. Again. She claims they are family, yet she risks all their lives! She…why do I care what she does? She never looked back at me, not  _once_ , until she decided she was to be a hero and needed to save my soul!  _Now_! With words!”

Her lips feel numb. Her eyes are hot. She has to refold her arms again, and make her fists unclench. On the bed, Udonta remains perfectly still.

 _“Gonna hurt,”_ he’d said.

_“Promises, promises.”_

He’d smiled like he understood.

She supposes she hopes he lives.

  *

“Nebula.”

Gamora is there too suddenly, even though Nebula heard her coming. There’s resolution in her expression, but all she says is,

“The food is ready.”

They haven’t yet broached the subject of Nebula’s participation in chores. Nebula is technically a freeloader, which she rather likes. No-one is assuming she’ll still be there when the meal is done.

She follows Gamora into the kitchen area. It still smells of Ravager: leather and meat and metal, with a faint hint of charcoal and vomit which marks this out as the culinary section of the ship. She wrinkles her nose, and shares a rare commiserating glance with Gamora.

The big lughead is today’s cook, and he has made some kind of thick, meaty stew and a stack of flat red dumplings. She fills her bowl quickly and retreats. Gamora and her team seem to eat together the majority of the time, but it’s clearly not a rule – the bionic fox comes and goes, often working at scraps of machinery at the table then leaving to go find more tools; the little tree runs back and forth across the room, chasing bugs and lights and nothing  as it pleases. Quill often eats in the infirmary. Obfonteri seems to prefer preparing his own rations. The so called destroyer makes himself food at frequent intervals when he is not the day's cook, and sometimes misses the general gathering. Today he stands at the table as if presiding. She walks quickly past him.

“Gamora’s questionable sister, wait,” he calls after her. She stops, shoulders high, but doesn’t turn around. He follows her into the doorway, close enough that she can hear the steady regularity of his breath. If he were about to attack it would hitch, accelerate.

The empath, Mantis, follows a moment behind the brute. She stands a little apart, as though this confrontation is being staged for her.

“What,” Nebula says.

“When you have eaten, I would hear your thoughts on the food I have provided,” he says.

She turns her head to stare at him suspiciously. Behind him, the empath is smiling, the corners of her eyes crinkled, though her hands are clasped with their customary nervousness.

“Why?”

“It is better to cook for everyone’s tastes,” he says. “Since you are in our home, even as Gamora’s regrettable blue adjunct, I will consider your preferences in my meal preparation. That is what is polite.”

“Sweet,” she says, rolling her eyes. “But if you’re trying to teach your pupil here about  _society manners_ , she should know…everyone on this ship is a freak.”

“Oh yes,” says Mantis. “That was the first lesson, and of course I know that  _I_  am very unusual…Drax says my smile is terrifying.” She demonstrates.

Nebula rolls her eyes again.

“Urgh, whatever,” she says.

Gamora is smiling at them too. It’s far more frightening than whatever Mantis is doing with her face.

 * 

She catches herself fidgeting; pacing. Quill is shifting restlessly from song to song on his Zune-thing, broadcasting a few opening bars before skipping on. She wishes he would at least unhook it from the speaker systems until he finds whatever he is looking for.

When she ends up – inevitably – in the training rooms, Gamora is waiting for her. Her sister’s earlier look of resolution has become something settled; almost peaceful.

“What?” Nebula asks.

“Care to spar?” Gamora asks, raising an eyebrow. Nebula’s fists clench and then loosen of their own accord. On any other day she would know the answer. Gamora is waiting, still with that odd look of peace behind the smirk.

“Yes. Fine.” She shrugs. The feeling of weight on her shoulders doesn’t shift away. “I will choose the weapons.”

“Fine.” Gamora waits.

After a moment, Nebula raises her fists. Gamora mirrors her, and the instant she does so, Nebula strikes, aiming the blow at her sister’s jaw. Gamora deflects it and jumps back, throwing a kick almost casually at her sister’s midriff.

Nebula stops, though her guard stays up.

“That was weak,” she says. “You’re not taking this seriously.”

“I am taking it seriously,” Gamora says. “I’m just not trying to kill you.”

“I’m not trying to kill you either,” Nebula says, and charges.

Later, they lie on the floor, panting. There’s blood in Nebula’s mouth, but none of her cybernetics have yet had to force structure back into the maze of her body.

“Peter says my training style is way too hardcore,” Gamora says without turning her head in Nebula’s direction.

“Your boyfriend is an idiot,” says Nebula. She spits the blood away.

“He isn’t. My boyfriend. But yes.” Gamora’s voice is soft and fond. It itches deep into Nebula’s nerves, but she remains still. “Once, he convinced us that an old Terran ritual with a ball qualified as training. But I went along with it, because…it reminded me of a game I played as a little girl. There was a ball…and you had to throw it and catch it exactly right, otherwise it would burst. There was some kind of paint inside, and when you failed, the mess got all over you. They based it on a fruit which used to grow nearby, I think…. I remembered…my mother would sigh whenever we played it, because she had to do more laundry. The paint smelled sweet, like flowers.”

Nebula says nothing until she has stood up again. She looks down at Gamora, now sitting cross-legged on the matt and staring into some impossible distance.

Nebula wants to say  _Come with me. Together we will kill Thanos._ But looking at Gamora now, she knows she would be refused.

She says, “You’ll become weak if you stay here with them.”

She leaves before Gamora has a chance to answer.

*

She used to think if she could just win, just once, that would be it. But it wasn’t.

She doesn’t know what is supposed to happen now. Except.

If she leaves, and dies...

Or if she kills Thanos...

...And Gamora does not even know of her victory or her defeat until the rest of the universe does too…the whole of their history would become, somehow, foolish beyond endurance.

She knows she can’t stay forever. This is not her place. She’s just hiding in it.

*

There’s a general feeling of tension breaking when Udonta wakes up. Nebula feels instead a cold pang in her chest, as though something locked in ice has just escaped, and the melting remains of its prison are dripping cold slurry amongst her insides.

Gamora is distracted again with Quill; is maybe even avoiding Nebula right back, so it’s not quite the final resolution she was expecting from this moment. It’s Rocket who bothers her most in the first few days after. The look in his eyes – badly disguised, painful wonder – sparks an involuntary response, and she’s sure at least once he saw it on her face. He stayed silent as his tree child waved from his shoulder. She’s…grateful? perhaps.

The Ravager leaders prowl the corridors now too. She avoids them totally. She’s not ready for new people to put into this equation.

It was supposed to be only Gamora who mattered here. Defeating her, forcing her to admit her fault…whatever. Now Gamora has others, and apparently they too insist on mattering at least a little. The big grey one keeps asking her to fight. She knocks him on his ass and he calls her a warrior like it’s an honour, not just a matter of fact. He made his food less salty on her request. The Empath is weird and fluttering and was subject to the Planet Ego all her life. If Nebula watches her, she is sure she will recognise something, so she doesn’t. But she’s aware of the possibility. Kraglin…Kraglin was strange before and is strange now. He smiles at her sometimes. There are deep shadows under his eyes.

Quill has found his song. And is playing it. Over. And over. “ _I have to go away_ ” again and again until she could scream.

Instead she stomps into Udonta’s sickroom and snaps at him. “Tell Quill to stop playing that damn song before I throw his ‘Zune’ into a sun!”

He tilts his chin up at her, eyebrows raised and eyes narrowed. Then he grins.

“You got another preference?”

“No!” she says, glaring. “Have him play any of the others. Once each, if he’s capable of it. I know he’s unable to just be quiet.”

“I’ll tell him one of the angry ones,” Udonta says, sniffing.

“Urgh.”

He sighs and tries to shift his weight on the bed, then groans. She frowns at him.

“Somethin’ else you were wanting?” he asks, dryly defensive. She rolls her eyes but doesn’t speak immediately.

He props himself up on an elbow and squints at her. Again she feels that pang of recognition; one she once felt only when she caught a glint of fury in Gamora's eyes. Now it seems to stir for all sorts of unfamiliar things.

Eventually, she asks what she came to ask.

“Are you staying?”

He stares, then, slowly, starts to chew on the inside of his cheek.

“You been speaking with that sister of yours?”

“No,” she says.

“You ain’t like me,” he says. Even though she barely knows him, it stings. But he goes on. “I got what I wanted and I threw it away. Maybe I got it back again somehow now, who knows. You even know what you want?”

“I know,” she says sharply. “I want Thanos dead. I want Gamora…”

 He waits, still squinting like every lost thing blazing in her hurts his eyes.

“To see me,” she says at last. “Whatever else there is to it.”

“There anything else?”

“Yes.” She has always known there was a life beyond her limits. A freedom which belonged to others, until Thanos chose to come upon them and take it. She'd known it was not for her. Her purpose had been assigned.

She knows she must still end him. But here she is, waiting for something else, when before all she had was that certainty, and the secret ugly doubt which assailed it.

And she realises suddenly that she wants to be here, in this moment. She wants all of it. Her sister; this ship; the galaxy it’s in. All the moments she has and all the ones she might achieve. Every weak and foolish thing she never before had the chance to hate.

He grins at her. She thinks she must look like a pirate too.

 *

When she leaves the room, Gamora is there waiting for her. There is a questing certainty on her face. It doesn’t look peaceful, only nervous.

Nebula listens to what she says, all of it, to the end. Gradually, painfully, she takes the embrace too.

“I’ll stay,” she tells her sister. “For a while. Not forever. But…I will be your sister, and you will be mine.”

It sounds like a question, despite everything, but Gamora nods.

“Wherever you are,” she says.


End file.
